“What have you got, Calamity?”

“Not much. Just a Rifleman and two Pack Hunters gearing up for a major push. Oh, and Monroe is throwing—Verdammt! Nadelschlauch!—hovercraft down the Marne again.”

Ten years since his classes in Deutsch, Julian remembered those words rightly enough. And it took quite a bit to shake Callandre Kell. He throttled up into a run, pushing sixty-five kilometers per hour as he raced back to the riverside. Leaving the Centurion and the Destroyer behind to guard their flank.

Back and forth and back again. Forward. Then retreat, retreat, retreat. From an early, decisive victory at Meaux, Julian’s force had chased a wounded Spider right into the loyalists’ advancing line. At first they’d managed a standstill, even when outmassed. But as survivors from a southeast line of advance straggled in, momentum slowly shifted into the enemy’s favor. News of two sidelined paladins did not help, even if they had broken that third column near single-handedly.

Julian’s warriors couldn’t stand up to this for much longer. Even rotating units back to a small cadre of support vehicles for fresh armor when possible, the toll of nonstop fighting was beginning to dig deep into the Guards’ strength.

They didn’t have much more to give.

Julian’s Templar broke through a stand of willow, shoving aside the lazy branches with swinging arms. On the far side, Chateau-Thierry’s wide-bodied buildings crowded narrow streets, the old-fashioned town crouched up against the Marne as if afraid to come across. So far it had been spared much in the way of collateral damage.

Not so the near side, where the wide, flat riverbank, once pristine, was now a nightmare of grass fires and churned earth. A dozen vehicles lay still all along its length; some charred and smoldering, others still burning, and some just quietly dead.

The main fight raged further upriver but fell back closer on Julian’s position with every passing moment. And he had a chore to do here, first.

Chasing ahead of his fire team, Julian pounded across the bank and waded several dozen meters out into the Marne. It was the third attempt in an hour by Conner Rhys-Monroe to use the river as a fire road, trying to skate hovercraft and amphibious APCs quickly down the wide, still waters. This time Julian had missed closing the gates. Two JES carriers were already downstream, far beyond his reach. He pulled his crosshairs over an approaching MHI Amphibious APC instead, waited the extra second for his targeting computer to make adjustments for velocity and angle, then eased into his triggers.

Twin streams of hellish energies crackled over the river, snapping out small arcs of electrical discharge that jumped and skittered over the water’s surface like neon insects. Both arcs of man-made lightning slashed the APC from tip to tail, drawing long, angry wounds down its side.

Opening it up as the Destroyer slid out onto the waters, skated across the near surface and hammered through the rent armor with its assault-class autocannon.

What few scraps of protection the APC mustered were carved away, and the interior gutted by long, lethal streams of hot metal. It sank out from under the targeting sights, with only one Purifier infantry making a long, desperate leap for the opposite shore.

The Destroyer’s secondary machine guns ripped him out of the air. Like a well-trained attack dog, the SM1 about-faced and skimmed back across the river to rein itself in at Julian’s side.

But there were two more hovercraft approaching, guarding another amphibious personnel carrier. Julian couldn’t believe they’d try to run the gauntlet. And they didn’t. All three swung wide, racing for the far bank on which Chateau-Thierry continued to wait. By unspoken consent, both sides had avoided the small city. It was a truce Julian had been glad to see, though now it was about to be broken.

He watched as the hovercraft skated along the far riverbank, looking for a shallow slope. Dawkins confirmed that loyalists had turned some of their ground vehicles for the eastern bridge as well. Upstream. Julian could barely see the low-lying bridge near a turn in the river’s course. Clear so far.

“If they start using the city to get behind us, we’re in trouble.”

Dawkins, as usual, had just the news to relay. “We’re in trouble anyway. We’ve a second loyalist force chasing Tara Campbell and Paladin Sinclair in our direction. They’ll hammer us from north-northwest if we don’t fall back. ETA, forty minutes.”

A crawling sensation pricked at Julian’s scalp and along the back of his neck. Then he wrote it off as immaterial. “This battle will be over in twenty if we can’t keep that bank clear.”

He’d worry about the collapse of the northern defensive line later.

“Just a little help,” he whispered. Wading further into the stream, until the waters swirled sluggishly around his Templar’s waist, Julian reached for the nearest hovercraft at the far shore. A Scimitar. “Just a bit.”

He considered sending the Destroyer after them, chasing them down. But an assault cannon could do terrible things inside a tightly packed city if it missed. When it missed.

Fire support coming from inside the city firing outward, though, Julian hadn’t thought of. Or expected.

Laserfire slashed outward from a narrow alley, one Julian would have considered too close-quarters for an armored vehicle, much less a BattleMech. It caught the Scimitar in the front left fender, chewing through the hovercraft’s skirt. The vehicle listed as air spilled out from beneath it, but did not ground.

Not until four-score missiles slammed over it in a curtain of fire, smoke and debris. Sharp blossoms of fire tore away armor and engine cowling, ferroglass canopy, and a wide swath from the lift skirt. It exposed the high-speed fans beneath the craft. And when two final warheads detonated in among the whirling vanes, the fans shattered with catastrophic effect.

Pieces of high-velocity metal slashed out through the skirt like razors, spilling the Scimitar’s entire air cushion on one final blow.

The vehicle grounded, spun about on what little kinetic energy remained in the ruined lifters, and then jumped back up awkwardly into the air to pirouette through the cloud of settling debris.

The violence was so immediate, so surprising, the following loyalists had only seconds to respond. And in any crisis situation, even with trained soldiers, you had three basic personality types.

Those who froze, as the APC driver did, driving forward toward the same riverbank stretch where the Scimitar had just met its death.

Those who acted—even if turning directly away from the bank, and under the weapons of Julian’s Templar, wasn’t the best of options for the second Scimitar.

“The Scimitar is all yours, Lord Davion.”

And those who called for help.

It was a vaguely familiar voice, belonging to the pilot of the Vulture that side-shuffled out of the narrow alleyway. Painted in bright, bright white with gold and burgundy accents, it could only be one of the paladins.

And there was only one he knew of who should have been operating on the local lines, even if she was several hours late.

“It’s ours, Lady Avellar.”

The Destroyer powered forward to carve half the Scimitar’s nose away with its autocannon. Then Julian neatly sliced away the remaining half.

The hovercraft plunged into the river’s strong grip, throwing up a white sheet of spray. It quickly sank from sight, disappearing as, on the far bank, the amphibious APC also fell under the Vulture’s impressive firepower.

The Vulture did not dally. Maya Avellar turned it upriver, stalking the far bank as she protected the approach to Chateau-Thierry. The ’Mech had a limp to it, dragging its right foot just enough to keep her from full-on running speed.